Without Love

(Written in the Winter of 2007)

Without love -

Those moments, they seemed so strange to me.

The night poured forth her melancholy

Into a despairing heart deprived

Of all that which it had ever strived

For, and thinking that it had attained,

Awoke one day to find naught remained

But the heart-shaped shell that had survived.

And without love -

Dreams turned into petty ambition,

That faithless void, my soul’s condition,

The poison they call Reality,

My drug of choice it now came to be.

And for many years, thus afflicted,

My ailing heart remained, restricted

By all reality couldn’t see.

Yet without love -

I rose one dawn to the morning air

Steeped, though I was, in a cold despair

The rays of a red sun warmed my breast

I felt something stir within my chest

And then, as I watched the sun emerge

My heart burst forth with a giant surge

Of love. I knew, then, that I was blessed.

With love -

Life became, once more, a gentle dream

And I, the dreamer, I’d always been.

On a journey new, did I begin,

A life in service of Man, my kin,

For a voice now whispered from above,

And as I listened, I learned that love

Is found not without, but from within.

~ shi-bu